Anthony Swinehart, professor of biology and curator of the Fisk Museum of Natural History at Hillsdale College, recently made what can only be described as the discovery of a lifetime: a three-millimeter long fossilized shark tooth found in the northern part of lower Michigan last August.
The tooth belonged to phoebodus sophiae, a species of shark from the Middle Devonian Period.
“The Devonian is an important geological period because it’s known as the age of fishes,” Swinehart said. “That’s when the fishes really began to radiate and diversify and that’s the time period in which the sharks emerged.”
According to Swinehart, the fossil is not only a valuable addition to the Fisk Museum, but its discovery also holds a great amount of importance to science as a whole.
“It was never before found in Michigan; it’s only the third locality in North America,” Swinehart said.
He added that the artifact is “the oldest member of the entire genus worldwide,” which Swinehart said is especially crucial because it “sets back out understanding of when the genus first appeared — back to that 385 million-year-old range.”
Matthew Hoenig, who co-authored an article accompanying the discovery with Swinehart and graduated from Hillsdale College in 2017, explained that the find could be useful in other ways, too.
“The discovery could also be significant in understanding shark evolution, as sharks likely evolved only shortly before Phoebus itself evolved,” Hoenig said.
Swinehart has crafted a life-sized model of the tiny shark by hand, which is also on display in the Fisk Museum. Such an undertaking would have been almost impossible if not for another important discovery.
“For many sharks, we don’t know what they look like, we just know it’s a shark’s tooth, and for a long time we didn’t know exactly what this genus looked like,” Swinehart said. “Then in 2019, some scientists discovered a complete one in Morocco. It was a different species but the teeth were very similar; it was from the phoebodus genus. I based my model off that one because variation of those species would be relatively minor.”
A paleontologist in the making since he was 7 years old, Swinehart is thrilled with his “first paleozoic publication” and says he has more discoveries coming soon.
Some may see finding a three-millimeter-long fossil as a feat of pure chance, but for Swinehart, “luck is where opportunity meets preparation.”
